Foundation models and intelligent decision-making: Progress, challenges, and perspectives
Jincai Huang, Yongjun Xu, Qi Wang, Qi Wang, Xingxing Liang, Fei Wang, Zhao Zhang, Wei Wei, Boxuan Zhang, Libo Huang, Ji Yoon Chang, Lizhi Ma, Ting Ma, Yuxuan Liang, Jie Zhang, Jianwei Guo, Xuhui Jiang, Xinxin Fan, Zhulin An, Tingting Li, Xuefei Li, Zezhi Shao, Tangwen Qian, Tao Sun, Boyu Diao, Chuanguang Yang, Chenqing Yu, Yiqing Wu, Mengxian Li, Haifeng Zhang, Yongcheng Zeng, Zhicheng Zhang, Zhengqiu Zhu, Yiqin Lv, Aming Li, Chen Xu, Bo An, Wei Xiao, Chenguang Bai, Yuxing Mao, Zhigang Yin, Sheng Gui, Wentao Su, Yinghao Zhu, Junyi Gao, Xinyu He, Yizhou Li, Guangyin Jin, Xiang Ao, Xuehao Zhai, Haoran Tan, Lijun Yun, Hongquan Shi, Jun Li, Changjun Fan, Kuihua Huang, Ewen M. Harrison, Victor C. M. Leung, Sihang Qiu, Yanjie Dong, Xiaolong Zheng, Gang Wang, Yu Zheng, Yuanzhuo Wang, Jiafeng Guo, Lizhe Wang, Xueqi Cheng, Yaonan Wang, Shanlin Yang, Mengyin Fu, Aiguo Fei
Abstract
Intelligent decision-making (IDM) is a cornerstone of artificial intelligence (AI) designed to automate or augment decision processes. Modern IDM paradigms integrate advanced frameworks to enable intelligent agents to make effective and adaptive choices and decompose complex tasks into manageable steps, such as AI agents and high-level reinforcement learning. Recent advances in multimodal foundation-based approaches unify diverse input modalities-such as vision, language, and sensory data-into a cohesive decision-making process. Foundation models (FMs) have become pivotal in science and industry, transforming decision-making and research capabilities. Their large-scale, multimodal data-processing abilities foster adaptability and interdisciplinary breakthroughs across fields such as healthcare, life sciences, and education. This survey examines IDM's evolution, advanced paradigms with FMs and their transformative impact on decision-making across diverse scientific and industrial domains, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in building efficient, adaptive, and ethical decision systems.